


The Wine-Dark Sea

by Anonymous



Category: Robert B. Parker - Spenser series
Genre: Gen, Unfinished
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-21
Updated: 2009-10-21
Packaged: 2017-10-02 13:10:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There's still no one like me," I said with a small edition of the killer grin. No point in wasting it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wine-Dark Sea

**Author's Note:**

> I do not know why I wrote this, I do not know why I'm posting it, this is not even a Yuletide fandom. This story will never be finished, not by me, at any rate. And yet I'm still kind of charmed by it, so here, internets, here is a bit of Robert B. Parker fanfic!

Miranda Goldblack came into my office dressed like a mourner at a village funeral, except for the small plastic jewels along her lashes. "Mr. Spenser?" she said. I nodded pleasantly. The charming smile could wait until I knew who she was. "I'd like to hire you," she said.

"Just like that?"

"I'm friendly with Rachel Wallace," she said, still standing behind my client chair. "She's mentioned your name a few times."

"I hope she didn't make you blush."

"No. She said you were the best of your kind."

"Of course I am. There's no one like me."

"I think she was referring to heterosexual men," she said, not smiling.

"There's still no one like me," I said with a small edition of the killer grin. No point in wasting it, and if she was friendly with Rachel Wallace, there was a better than even chance that it would be wasted on her. "Have a seat. Tell me your troubles. Unless part of the job is to find out what the job is."

She sat very precisely in the chair. "No. That would not be useful. My father is missing."

"You need me to find the number of Missing Persons over at the police station? Switchboard's faster and cheaper for that."

"I don't want to involve the police."

"Why not?"

"My father and I have been estranged for some time. I have a low opinion of police discretion, and I would prefer as much discretion as possible in the matter."

"You in trouble?"

"No."

"If you and your father are estranged, how do you know he's missing?"

"I don't. I think he is, but I'm not certain. I would like you to determine if he is missing, and if so, if he left of his own volition."

"And if he did?"

"Then I will consider the matter closed."

"And if he didn't?"

"I will determine what further steps to take, if any."

I looked at her. She didn't seem to mind, but then I wouldn't mind being looked at by me, either. "Why do you think he's missing?"

"His car is gone. There's no mail coming in. And the plants on his balcony are dead. When I knew him, my father was a dedicated gardener. He would never have left his plants in pots after they died."

"Where does he live?"

After half an hour, I knew that Michael Ochshorn was a retired chemistry professor at Boston College. He lived alone in a small apartment in South Boston. He had no girlfriend, as far as his daughter knew, and had not spoken to her mother since they had divorced in 1975. A guy he sometimes played poker with hadn't seen him in a few weeks and had called Miranda.

"What's he like?" I finally asked. Miranda Goldblack seemed to know virtually nothing about her father, and didn't seem to care.

"I don't know." She had been saying this frequently, and while I was used to being stonewalled, usually my clients at least pretended to be helpful in the beginning. If this was as helpful as she could be, the job might be more trouble than if was worth, even for Christmastime approaching.

"You don't know."

"I haven't seen him since I was twelve, and I'm thirty-four now."

"Why?"

"Why am I thirty-four? I think the consensus is for the earth's orbiting the sun, but if you have an alternate explanation, I'd be interested in it." I exhaled slowly. A sense of humor was a good thing. A woman with a sense of humor was far more fun. I didn't think that Miranda Goldblack was going to be fun even with a sense of humor. "I'm sorry," she said. "That was rude."

"Why are you and your father estranged?" If she said 'I don't know,' she had more problems than I could help with, I thought. She lifted her chin.

"He was abusive throughout my childhood after my parents divorced," she said calmly. "When I was twelve, I refused to put up with him any longer. The courts voided the visitation agreement, and I haven't seen him since."

"Oh." At least she knew.

"You won't find saints in my family, Mr. Spenser."

"I don't find saints often."

"But you've never stopped looking."

"Did Rachel Wallace tell you that?"

"Rachel told me that you would be a saint if you were not a thug." She smiled when she said the word _thug_. She had small plastic jewels attached to each of her teeth, as well, I saw.

"May I ask you a question? We've been sitting here for over thirty minutes now, and not once have you attempted to jump my bones. Why?"

"My suggestion is I know a little more about you than I would had I just walked in off the street, and I don't make it a habit to be rejected. What would you conjecture?"

"I think Rachel has told you about Susan Silverman." Her eyes, under their loads of shiny plastic, were almost as knowing as Susan's were. She left a check made out to me on my desk. I felt better every time I saw it.

"So what do you think?" I asked Susan. We were at her house on Linnaean Street, drinking gimlets from the glasses that Susan had decreed were to be used only for gimlets for the two of us. In the kitchen, I had left a rack of lamb to marinate in blood orange juice and Japanese soy sauce.

"I think that's an excellent reason for not jumping your bones," Susan said, sipping a half-gram of her gimlet. Wow. She must have been really fired up by my description of the jewels attached to Miranda Goldblack's teeth.

"I suppose so. What do you think about her?"

"It's interesting that she is so calm about her father's past abuse, has not sought a reconciliation, and is willing to pay you to find him."

"Well, she doesn't necessarily want him found," I pointed out. I knew Susan knew this, but wouldn't mind my saying it. "She just wants to make sure that he's not in trouble."

"What kind of trouble could an old man get into? How old is he?"

"Late sixties, I think. Maybe gambling, maybe blackmail. I don't know. She couldn't tell me anything. That's the problem. I don't know anything, even about my client.

"Well, why does she want to make sure her father's not in trouble if she doesn't know him?"

I shrugged and finished my second gimlet. Susan had already had nearly a sixth of her first. "Blood," I said a moment later.

"Thicker than water?"

"So I've been told."

The next morning, after a run with Susan through Cambridge, Pearl at our heels, frightening the matrons, I went down to Professor Ochshorn's apartment. It was a prewar building that had been divided for the baby boomer generation, and then divided again to make a profit out of itself after the seventies. There was no supervisor's apartment, just a phone number posted next to the elevator for maintenance. The apartment was on the fourth floor. No one answered, but then I wasn't expecting an answer. There weren't any newspapers piled up outside the door, and no Chinese takeout menus hanging from the doorknob. The apartment was locked and I didn't have a real reason to break in yet. Downstairs, in the mailroom, his box had sounded hollow when I'd rapped on it. Either he'd stopped his mail at the post office, wasn't getting any, or his daughter was overreacting and he was collecting it daily.

I had established that either everything was absolutely fine or everything was very, very wrong. This was excellent. I had only two possibilities now. Both of which I had already had, but I refused to let that dampen my mood.

Having done a good morning's sleuthing, I went back to my office. I was sitting at my desk contemplating eternity when Martin Quirk called. "Doing anything important?"

"Contemplating eternity?"

"Come down to the station."

"Always glad to show off my new tie, Commander."

"You're not nearly as funny as you think you are, Spenser."

"And thank God for that, because otherwise you'd never stop laughing and what would happen to the crime rate in Boston? We'd all be murdered in our beds. Well, except for Hawk. And me."

"Spenser. Get down here now." Quirk hung up without saying goodbye. Rude bastard.

The station had too many computers, I thought, but then what did I know? We hadn't all been murdered in our beds, and since I was as funny as I thought I was, it had to be due to Quirk's lack of a sense of humor, and computers would ruin anyone's day. I nodded in a friendly way to several of those sworn to protect and serve, but no one nodded back. Quirk's manners were filtering through the ranks.

Quirk's desk was as bare as it always was. I had never seen anything on it beside a pen, a blank legal pad, and a plastic cube of photographs, all of it squared precisely at right angles. Quirk was as immaculate as ever, too.

"Nice tie," he said as I entered. I was wearing a green polo shirt and navy-blue pants and Pumas. Quirk's shirt was crisply pressed pale purple stripes and his dark blue jacket hung on a hook next to the window. His tie was dark violet and the knot was precise.

"Looking good yourself, Commander," I said.

"She look familiar?" He handed me a sheaf of Polaroid photographs. The subject of the snapshots was all the same, a woman's head, and taken with little regard for composition. The bullet wound in her temple had bled freely, and her face was scarlet, as if her condition embarrassed her. The jewels on her teeth and eyes were visible in every shot.

"Yeah," I said. "Her name's Miranda Goldblack. She hired me yesterday afternoon."

"Knew you were smarter than you looked," Quirk said without rancor. "She's alive, by the way, in critical at Boston Med. We're treating it as attempted manslaughter for now."

"I'd say that if she was shot in the head, someone knew who she was and wanted to shoot her specifically."

"Can't find a reason anyone would want to kill her. Someone saw her coming out of your office yesterday, and that's the only unusual thing she's done that we know about."

"When did it happen?"

"Doc says around five-thirty."

"Bullet?"

"Twenty-two."

"Huh."

"Yeah. Small. But causes plenty of damage at close range, which this was. Why'd she hire you?"

"Family issue," I said.

"She's never been married, no children, no boyfriends that the neighbors know of, no girlfriends they noticed. Mother's in a home in Lexington, past ten years. Advanced Alzheimer's. Family?"

"Father."

"Ah."

"Ah?" I said.

"It's what we big-city homicide dicks say when we get useful information."

"Thought it was something like that. Personally, I've always been fond of 'Ah-hah! I know you did it, Dapper Dan! Confess!'"

Quirk looked at me and his lids drooped briefly. "Whatever she asked you to do, it's not worth getting killed over," he said.

"Why Commander, I never knew you cared."

He ignored me. "What'd she want?"

"She thinks her father's run off and wants to know if he has."

"Not to find him?"

"I get the feeling that she doesn't give a damn about him, but she knows there's no one else to do it."

"She visits her mother every week. The old lady's only visitor."

"What else do you know?"

"She was left behind a Dumpster off Hayworth Road, two blocks from her place. Thirty-four. No arrest record, one parking ticket from six years ago. Lives in a one-bedroom on Delaney Street. Technical writer, specializing in computer manuals."

"If I'd known, I wouldn't have taken her money," I said. Quirk didn't pay attention.

"Degree from BC in technical writing. Musical taste, as far as we can tell from her CDs, runs to Elvis Costello and soft jazz. Anything you care to contribute to our efforts to protect the populace at large?"

"Estranged from biological father since age twelve," I said, leaning back in my chair. "Friends with Rachel Wallace. Otherwise, I got nothin'."

"Nothing is nothing," Quirk said, biting off the ends of the words precisely.

"Yep," I said helpfully.

"We'll keep trying to work it out. Nobody's this featureless."

"Belson see the scene?"

"He's off this week and next."

I was glad her check had already cleared.

The Mister Coffee in my office was obligingly silent and warm about my sudden need for caffeine. The light outside was a pearly grey, and I sat in darkness until it was time to go back to my apartment.

Pearl the Wonder Dog was at Susan's still, and the air in the apartment was unmoving. I drank a Belgian White Ale that Paul Giacomin had left, while mixing tabbouleh with heirloom purple tomatoes and chopped mint, and had another listening to the dulcet strains of Ella Fitzgerald. I slept the sleep of the blameless and celibate, and any prophetic dreams went unheeded.

The phone rang as soon as I stepped into the office, having put myself on the outside of Breton oatcakes and bitter apricot jam. I would have been more impressed with my caller's impeccable timing if the first words he spoke had not been, "You finally remembered where your office is?"

"Thought I'd let you learn the Arabic numeral system," I said.

"I got an instinct," Hawk said. "Close mah eyes an' poke them little rubbery things."

"With your native rhythm, no doubt," I said, sorting the few pieces of mail. No letter from Sweden informing me that I may have already won a Nobel Prize. Maybe tomorrow.

"Indubitably," Hawk agreed. "You want donuts?"

"Are you paying?"

"I a criminal," Hawk reminded me. "I not a participant in legitimate commercial enterprise."

"Jesus, don't stick up the donut place," I said. "We'd never be able to live in this town again."

"Fifteen minutes," he said, and hung up.

The coffee was ready when he came in, thirteen minutes later. I pointed this out, and Hawk said, "Ain't learned the Arabic numeral system yet," and set down a bag of donuts.

"All for us?"

"They all for you, you owe me nine-twenty," he said. I looked at him. "Worth a try," he said, and flashed his teeth. They matched his shirt, which in turn matched his belt, which matched his pants and shoes.

"Glow in the dark much?" I asked, and took a bite of donut. There was very little that donuts could not improve, and what they lacked, coffee sufficed for.

"Lot less than you do, sugar," he said and drank some coffee. It was caffeinated; I had decided that coffee was my best defense against a heart attack. Have to keep the old pulmonary system revved. "Vinnie Morris dropped by the Harbor Health Club this morning," he said.

"Anyone faint?"

"Naw, too early for the yuppies to be exercising. Spandex take time to put on."

"How foolish of me."

"Indeed," Hawk agreed in a perfect Yankee honk. "Vinnie want to know if I've happened, in the course of the previous days, while traversing the streets of this fair city, to encounter a gentleman with a monkey."

"I know Vinnie doesn't use," I said.

"Can't use and shoot," Hawk agreed.

"Ty-Bop?" I reminded him.

"Ty-Bop gon' be dead by twenty."

"Sure. Which begs the question why he asked that, which sounds more like something Timothy Leary would come up with."

"Well, when I picked my jaw off the floor, I requested edification." Hawk looked pleased with himself, or as pleased as Hawk ever looked. The sense of bland benevolence that radiated off him would have been frightening, had I not known that he would not shoot me in the near future.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Hawk bit into a donut carefully. Not a crumb, wily as donut crumbs are, escaped. "The guy with a monkey, which is the only name for him Vinnie seems to know, wishes to hire a bodyguard. Vinnie wants to warn me off."

"He doesn't think you can do it?" Hawk looked at me. "I withdraw the question."

"The guy with the monkey making inroads into Boston drug scene. Vinnie doesn't want me caught on the wrong side in a shootout."

"That may be the first human feeling I've ever heard of Vinnie exhibiting."

"Vinnie doesn't want to have to shoot me. Not only 'cause I immortal, but 'cause if he shoot me, then he got to shoot you, and you would find shooting him distressing, and then it all degrade into a new Boston massacre, and that wreck some plans some people have." I didn't ask what plans or what people.

"A guy with a monkey?"

"Odd that I not heard of him, I admit."

"If he does talk to you…"

"I'll see what he is," Hawk said, and I left it at that, and stirred my coffee.

"I got a new client yesterday, and today she's in the hospital," I said.

"That quick," Hawk said.

"She got shot."

"Why?"

"No clue."

"Clues generally beneficial, I informed," Hawk said.

"Could be useful," I admitted. I told him what Miranda Goldblack had told me, and what I had found that morning, adding what I knew from Quirk. Hawk listened without reaction.

When I finished, I looked mournfully at the empty bag of donuts. Hawk said, "How does she know Rachel Wallace?" I shrugged.

"Rachel Wallace knows a remarkable number of people," I said.

"True."

"But she does not seem like someone Miranda Goldblack would ordinarily encounter."

"Also true."

"Perhaps it would be helpful to ask Rachel about her friend currently in intensive care, who has just hired me."

"Damn, why didn't I think of that?" Hawk said.

"Because I'm the master detective, and you're the comic relief," I said.

"Sho' nuff."

Rachel Wallace, when I called her, was more than willing to be plied with alcohol in the Radisson Hotel. She kissed the air near my cheek, and ordered a martini, straight up.

"What do you want to know?" she asked, when the martini was half-gone.

"Do you see the martini glass as half-empty or half-full?" I asked.

She looked thoughtfully at the glass and drank the rest of it. "All the way empty," she said, and looked at the bartender.

"Pragmatic approach," I said, and drank some beer. They did not have Rolling Rock. I made do.

"Avoids pop psychology."

"Do you know a woman named Miranda Goldblack?"

"Do you mean that in a Biblical sense?"

"In any sense," I said.

"Yes."

"Yes, in a Biblical sense, or yes, in a general sense?"

"I've never known you to be interested in my sex life before," she said, tapping a finger on the edge of her glass. "Any problems getting it up these days? We're none of us any younger, I know, but still."

"That was unnecessary."

"Yes, it was. I apologize."

"I reiterate my original question."

"Half-full. And in a Biblical sense. We met in a bar very much like this one."

"Break up with her?"

"No. She broke up with me, and I didn't object."

"She say why?"

"Why don't you ask her?"

"She's in the hospital," I said, after taking a fortifying sip of my Red Hook. "She got shot." Rachel blinked, finished her second martini, and gestured for another. It was not until it was in front of her that she spoke.

"Why would someone shoot Miranda?"

"I don't know."

"She…" She drank deeply and bit her olive in half. "She broke up with me because she didn't want to be involved with someone as prominent as I am. She had no interest in being well-known, even in her profession. She was intensely private. I am not unable to read people, and I had no sense of her inner life."

"You're no help," I said, and chewed on some Brazil nuts. My mouth felt chalky.

"Sorry," she said. "I certainly didn't shoot her."

"Well, that's a relief," I told her, and ate a small handful of peanuts. I was proud of my restraint.

Rachel reached over and ate three cashews. The bottom of the bowl was visible. "Did she say we had been involved?"

"She said you were friendly."

"We are. Why in god's name would someone shoot Miranda?"

"I have no idea. And I can't tell if it's related to why she hired me or not."

"Why did she?"

"Family issue," I said.

"Miranda has a family?" Her pupils were dilated. That was the most effect I had ever seen alcohol have on her, and from far many more martinis. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised."

"Never mentioned them," I guessed.

"She always had a sort of Platonic appeal. Appearing fully-grown from her apartment door, or something. The metaphor is flawed, but you know what I mean."

"Yeah."

"It was a little off-putting, to tell the truth, which was why I didn't object when she said it was over." She chewed thoughtfully on a macadamia. "I'm not much help, am I?"

"No," I admitted, and the bartender placed another bowl of nuts between us. The rest of the evening was spent trading sexual innuendo, until I went back to my apartment and traded further innuendo with Susan over the phone. Susan's was better.

Boston College is larger than it sounds, a Roman Catholic institution on the North Shore. The chemistry department was in a hideous brick building with a raw beard of ivy clinging gamely on. The department chair, Kenneth Lakritz, was in his mid-thirties with a big belly. There was a dusty ficus tree behind him.

"Professor Ochshorn retired some years ago," he said, clasping his hands over his belly. "Before I came to the faculty, in fact. I would imagine most of his colleagues who would have known him have retired as well."

"Who would have known him?" I asked.

"Oh, goodness. I've no idea. Perhaps Professor Trimbel? His office is down the hall, third door on your left." I was nearly to the door when he added "Hank is on sabbatical this semester."

I turned and looked at him. He grinned and said, "Sabbatical, in this case, would be a euphemism for forced early retirement."

"Any cause?"

"Oh, there's always a cause, Mr. Spenser. A better question would perhaps be of the catalyst."

"That's a chemical term," I said.

"Indeed it is," he said, "and you'll forgive me for retreating to the incomprehensible jargon of my profession. It's easier than thinking."

"Most things are," I said.

"Hank's professional specialty is in organic chemistry. Organic chemistry �" stop me if I go too fast �" is basically about reactions." He spun around in his chair, twice.

I didn't say anything.

"He blew up a lab. Two labs, really, and that should not happen, not without massive miscalculation. He claimed he was trying to reproduce a colleague's unpublished experiment, but could not show any of the committee any papers. There were…concerns about his mental health."

I didn't say anything.

"I suppose, having said that, I should add that Hank is eccentric and brilliant. There have been concerns about his mental health for twenty years."

"Can he answer questions?" I asked. He shrugged.

"I don't see why not. He's nuts, not senile."

**Author's Note:**

> I did have this plotted out (although I've long since lost my notes)—in my head, Ochshorn is synthesizing a heroin derivative, code-named Helen, in a private lab, working for the man with the monkey. That's kind of all I remember, so if you want to finish this and/or take it in a totally different direction, please, feel free—let me know! I would love to see what someone makes of this.


End file.
